An Open Source Typeform Alternative You Host Yourself

What self-hosting changes

A self-hosted form builder changes where you operate the application and retain data. With FilaForms, you deploy the Laravel application, configure its database, and set its email delivery. Form submissions then remain in that database under your infrastructure controls.

That setup can help when a form needs to connect to application users, internal workflows, or existing reporting. You can build a form in the same Filament area where your team manages the rest of the application. See the Laravel form builder for Filament for the product's core workflow.

Self-hosting also gives you responsibility. You own upgrades, backups, monitoring, and mail configuration. FilaForms has no cloud version. It requires an existing Laravel and Filament application. It is the wrong tool for a non-technical team that needs a hosted link in five minutes.

Open source answers a different question. It concerns the licence and access to source code. Self-hosted software can be commercial, as FilaForms is. An open-source project can also be hosted by someone else. Evaluate both requirements directly instead of treating them as interchangeable.

Typeform versus FilaForms

Typeform is a hosted service and removes application setup entirely. FilaForms runs in your Laravel application and keeps form data in your own database. The table above lists the rest.

FilaForms uses a one-time licence per plan, rather than a price per response. It has no vendor response cap. Your database capacity and application infrastructure still set practical limits. Typeform uses subscription plans with response allowances.

Both products support conditional logic and multi-step forms. That overlap matters when a form must collect different details from different respondents. A multi-step FilaForms form can guide people through grouped questions and hide fields that do not apply.

The interaction does not match Typeform exactly. Typeform's polished, conversational one-question-at-a-time presentation remains ahead. FilaForms presents steps and fields in a Filament form interface. It does not reproduce that conversational presentation or Typeform's template gallery.

Multi-step forms, and the code you actually write

You do not write code to build the form. A two-step project inquiry, with a field that appears only when someone picks a website project, is assembled in the visual builder inside your Filament panel. That is the part Typeform users expect to keep, and it is the part FilaForms keeps.

Code enters when the submission needs to do something. Every submission dispatches an event carrying the form and the submission, so your application can react in its own domain language.

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace App\Listeners;

use App\Models\Lead;
use FilaForms\Core\Events\FormSubmitted;

final class CreateLeadFromInquiry
{
    public function handle(FormSubmitted $event): void
    {
        if ($event->form->slug !== 'project-inquiry') {
            return;
        }

        $data = $event->submission->data;

        Lead::query()->create([
            'email' => $data['email'],
            'name' => $data['name'],
            'project_type' => $data['project_type'] ?? null,
            'submission_id' => $event->submission->getKey(),
        ]);
    }
}

That listener is the difference a hosted service cannot offer. There is no webhook to receive, no retry queue to babysit, and no API rate limit between the form and your database. The submission and the lead are written in the same application, inside the same transaction boundary you already control.

Review the FilaForms feature set when you need field types, submissions, analytics, and email notifications in the same Laravel application.

Who should stay on Typeform

Stay on Typeform when conversational presentation is central to the form. It is also the better fit when a non-technical marketing team needs polished templates and a hosted link quickly. That team can publish without operating Laravel, Filament, a database, backups, or mail delivery.

Choose FilaForms when your team already maintains Laravel and Filament. It works best when form records need to remain in your application's database and share your application environment. Its visual builder, conditional logic, multi-step forms, submission dashboard, analytics, and email notifications cover the form workflow without moving submissions to a separate hosted service.

The decision is not that one tool is universally better. It depends on whether hosted convenience or application control matters more for the form.